Toolkit
Every private equity deck in 2026 says the same thing. Returns will come from operations, not leverage. The financial-engineering era is over, the operating era has begun, and the numbers now back the slogan: in S&P Global Market Intelligence's 2026 Private Equity Survey, 71% of
Toolkit
We treat a continuation fund as what it is: a tool, not a verdict. The same vehicle that lets a genuinely strong company keep compounding under an owner who understands it can also let a tired one dodge the markdown it has already earned. Nothing in the structure tells you
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That’s why WPP is now doing reorg karaoke while Publicis is eating the category. Same industry. Same strategic questions. Completely different answers. WPP spent a decade defending the old model. Creative networks. Media buying. Holding company theatre. Then sold Kantar, branded itself “Open”, merged agencies, retired famous names, and
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They made an actual strategic choice. While most holding companies spent the last decade rearranging deck chairs, renaming the same six agencies, and pretending “integration” meant putting twelve people on the same Teams call, Publicis quietly rebuilt the machine. They bought Epsilon for $4.4bn. They scaled Sapient. They built
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Martin Sorrell built the thing through 133 acquisitions. At its peak, WPP had more than 60 flagship brands spread across creative, media, PR, brand consulting, health, and data. It looked impressive. Which is usually the first sign something is hiding under the carpet. Then came the clean-up. VML, Ogilvy,
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They are having a bad model. WPP cut 9,000 jobs. Omnicom and IPG are smashing themselves together and still taking out thousands of roles. Dentsu cut 3,400. Havas is basically flat. Meanwhile Publicis added around 5,000 people. That should make a few people in holding company boardrooms
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Which is inconvenient, because tech people prefer their operators to arrive wearing Allbirds and saying things like “community.” Bending Spoons buys the stuff everyone thinks has had its day. Evernote. WeTransfer. Vimeo. Eventbrite. AOL. Brightcove. Meetup. Old brands. Real users. Tired products. Pricing that probably needed adult supervision years ago.
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Same job title. Same office. Same “thrilled to share” LinkedIn announcement that reads like it was typed at gunpoint. Completely different job. The numbers are fairly brutal. CEOs at public companies average about 7 years in the seat. In PE-backed portfolio companies, it is closer to 3. CFOs drop
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The industry calls it dry powder, because apparently “we raised too much money at the top of the market and now can’t find enough deals that clear the math” was a bit long for the annual meeting. Bain says roughly a quarter of that capital has been sitting for
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Private equity, naturally, has taken that as an invitation. The 15 biggest take-privates announced since 2023 add up to $217B of enterprise value. EA at $55B. Endeavor at $25B. Walgreens at $23.7B. Hologic, Toshiba, Adevinta, Sealed Air, Subway and the rest of the “apparently misunderstood by public investors”
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Every private equity firm now has a digital transformation story. Sounds impressive. Looks good in the deck. Gives everyone something modern to say in the annual meeting. What it often means in reality is this: They bought Salesforce. Nobody uses it. Or they bought HubSpot. Or a BI tool. Or
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The market may be waiting for private equity to get better. Bain’s latest midyear report is not exactly bedtime reading for anyone hoping the old model is coming back. Deal activity is still sluggish. Exits are stuck. Fundraising is uninspiring. Distributions remain well below historical norms. The implied capital